WHAT IS SUBSTANCE?

Substance is the meaning or theme of a work. Substance is the "significance" that you are "So Whatting." Substance is made more powerful by connecting to the universal or archetypal.

Theme vs. Motif: author's expression of an idea in his work vs the recurring idea himself

Allegory/Parable: Stories where every object serves s a representative of some other idea or boject

Universal/Archetypal Characters:

• Epic Hero: typically the protagonist of an epic who succeeds in his goals.
• Tragic Hero: protagonist brought down through a tragic flaw
• Byronic Hero: Proud, Moody, Dark, Cynical; idealized but flawed character according to Lord Byron's works
• AntiHero: character that is not morally good, but the audience sympathizes for them
• Outcast: the ostracized individual
• Scapegoat: The person who unjustly assumes guilt. Killed by a group in a desperate bid for atonement
• Stranger in the Village: similar to the outcast, but introduces their own unorthdox ideas instead of being

Universal/Archetypal Women:

• earth mother: the warm, receiving mother of all; offers spriritual and emotional nourishment to others.
• temptress: a shameless slute. Leads men astray.
• soul-mate: the ideal woman; the female complement to the protagonist. No matter what, their bond cannot be broken.
• platonic ideal: idealized love that is never actualized; courtly love. Source of inspiration to the hero; intellectual attraction>physical attraction
• maiden: pure, innocuous, naive; virgin
• mother: figure with mother-esque characteristics
• crone: wise and compassionate old lady; also capable of representing discontent

Universal/Archetypal Images:

• Colors: white=innocence, purity; red=passion, love, danger, violence; green=envy; black=evil; yellow=hope, happiness; purple=royalty so on in so forth. Often corrupted for authors purposes
• Numbers: 1=unity; 3=new family, triumvirate, trinity, comitatus, 7=circles of hell, deadly sins, 12= circulation, months, 12 zodiacs; 13=bad luck
• Water: purity, change, tranquility; symbolizes the unconscious
• Yin and Yang (Juxtaposition): Light and Dark: Knowledge and Ignorance
• Nature and Garden: edenic,
• Tree: knowledge
  
  

Universal/Archetypal Plots:

• Coming-of-Age (Bildungsroman): coming to grips with the bigger question (mortality,sex,loss)
• Mistaken Identity/Farce: dramatic irony, but who is the real man: the costume, or the man who wears it. Comedy fueld by dramtic irony resulting from mistaken identity.
• Renewal of Life: You pick yourself up, and you move on
• Quest/Journey: the journey of the hero.
• Spiritual epiphany: one becomes spiritually enlightened.

Novel types:

• Bildungsroman: coming-of-age story
• Dystopian: a ruined utopia.
• Utopian: a perfect society
• Epistolary: a novel told in letters
• Gothic: the dark side of individualism; moral and physical corruption
• Historical:revists an important element of history
• Novella: a short novel
• Novel of manners: novels about society's rules; almost always riddled with satire
• Social novel: synonymous with novel of manners

GENDER, RACE, AND CLASS AS CONTEMPORARY "OUTCAST" THEMES

• Issues of Gender: A Doll's House, Jane Eyre,
• Issues of Race: The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, The Poisonwood Bible, Brave New World, Fences
• Issues of Class: Brave New World, Jane Eyre, 1984

Other Important Themes:

• Love: beginnings, innocence, satisfaction, splendor, possibility

• Religion: used to increase the plausibility of fatalism or divine intervention

• Mortality: when characters face the possibility of their death, they come of age and mature

• Reality: the most prudent of characters make sure to keep the contrast between reality and idealization in mind

• Sanity: thee more capricious characters fail to maintain a partition between reality and idealizaion

• Carpe Diem: seize the day (let's have sex)

• Pastoral: sheep and fields; fertility; idealism of the outdoor life

Exploring Literary "Substance" Through Philosophical Thought

• Romanticism (vs. Classicism vs. Realism):
  • Romanticism: an adverse reaction to the preceding literary movement Rationalism; Rationalism's main idea is that we can discover truth through application of reason, instead of past, Church, or institutional authority
  • Classicism=Greco-Roman;
  • Realism: see directly below
• Realism: a writing style developed in between the 1850s and the early 1900s that attempts to depict life as accurately as possible by excluding all idealization or romanticism.
• Modern Realism: primary emphasis is placed on the common man, a member of the proletariat
• Magical Realism: mostly Spanish novels; events occur that defy physical and reality, but are accepted as truth
• Gothicism: emphasis on macabre and ghastly elements within literary works
• Modernism: experimental writing styles and forms prevalent in literature and other arts between the 1920s and 1945
• Postmodernism:
• Existentialism: emphasis on the philosophy of the self as a liberated and unbound individual
• Absurdism: beliefe that human life is devoid of purpose and order; entropy and inefficiency reign supreme
• Feminism: see feminist theory

Literary Theories Of Which College Board Readers Are Aware

• Feminist:
  • emphasis on the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.
  • examines inherently patriarchal elements of society
  • focus on exclusion of women authors from the traditional literary canon
  • three waves
    • First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's
    • Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s
    • Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present
• Psychoanalytic:
  • build on Freudian theories of psychology
    • id, ego, and superego
      • id: libido
      • ego
        • selective perception
        • selective memory
        • denial
        • displacement
        • projection
        • regression
        • fear of intimacy
        • fear of death
      • superego: the area of the unconscious that houses internal and external judgment and begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex
  • read for psychoanalytical interpretation
  • also builds on Jung's work
    • assume all stories and symbols are based on mythic models from mankind's past
• Marxist:
  • primary emphasis on socioeconomic differences between classes
  • implications and complications of the capitalist system
  • who does it (whatever "it" may be) benefit
    • the bourgeoisie?
    • the proletariat?
  • how is the proletariat oppressed in both everyday life and literature
  • material dialectic
    • materialism>politics, law, philosophy, religion and art built upon an economic basis
  • perpetual cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution
  • eternal battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat
• New Historicism:
  • reconnect a literary work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultrual and political movements of the time
  • every work is a product of the historic moment that created it.
  • we cannot look at history objectively and are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe
• Formalism:
  • formalists treat each work as its own distinct piece
  • formalists assume that the keys to understanding a text lie within the text itself
  • heavy emphasis on form
• Reader-Response:
  • the response an audience has to a literary work serves as the basis for interpretation of the text. Can be applied through several different perspectives
    • psychoanalytic lens
    • feminist lens
    • structuralist lens

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